Tag: OS

Catch it is the result of a collaboration between the Institute of Psychology Health of the University of Liverpool and the University of Manchester. The goal is to provide users insight in the how and why of their feelings. The application relies on a number of principles from cognitive behavioural therapy in orde to achieve this goal. The developers furthermore highlight that the app should primarily be considered as a tool to illustrate and demonstrate the key principles, rather than for it to be an alternative for professional care.

– Whenever you wish to record a mood, you can select a number of defaults from a menu or enter a mood yourself. When doing so, you can also rate the intensity and provide your location. Irrespective of the valence of the emotion and the intensity of that emotion, you subsequently run through a process of challenging your cognitions and trying to change them (or their intensity). In the case of the registration of a strong, positive emotion, this seems somewhat inappropriate.
– There is no possibility to receive automatic notifications: you have to take the initiative to commence a registration yourself.

+ The app pays strong attention to data protection: each time you boot the app (and even when you switch between applications), you are required to enter a 4 digit PIN to gain access to the diary. There is also an extensive part of the app that concerns privacy and it also allows you to indicate whether or not you wish to share your data anonymously with the app’s researcher (an option which is inactive by default).
+ The app has a nice design and is intuitive to use.
+ You can easily export diary data as an email attachment in a CSV-format.

“Catch it can be a useful tool to keep track of one or several emotions and if applicable, also to challenge them an subsequently share yhour experience, for example with a mental healthcare professional.”

I-Positivity is a 4-week standalone intervention. Its goal is to increase the feeling of happiness and wellbeing. The content is based on insights from positive psychology and is currently particularly at recent stroke survivors. The application was developed by the Clinical Psychology research group of the KU Leuven. Currently, the developers are in the midst of a thorough rework of the app. After its re-release, a new review will certainly also follow here.

– Although the app’s initiators are a reliable source, this info is currently difficult to retrieve. On the website of the research group, some background (only in Dutch) is however provided.
– The app only functions optimally when you provide it access to your contacts, calendar, photos, email and text messages. There is also a suggestion to make a Facebook connection and post messages from within the app. This might feel somewhat intrusive.
– The written text is not always presented optimally. Even on fairly large devices, there is therefore still the need for frequent scrolling.

+ If you do allow the app to access all the functionalities (both of your smartphone and of social media) it creates a strong added value. Assignments given from within the app can for example easily be added as calendar items. When – according to these calendar items – you should have completed an assignment, the app also automatically notifies you and asks you to briefly write down your overall experience when you performed that tas.
+ A timeline groups all your efforts in a chronological overview.
+ The app settings has a very prominent option to remove all your personal data from the app – in case you wish to – which works effortlessly.

Install the app using the links below, or read more on the use of apps in MHC. Important to note: although the print screens above are in Dutch, the app is also available in English. Temporarily (?) not available for Android.